Monday, January 11, 2010

Hot Knives pours a foamy Greatest Sips zine

Beer websites are all well and good, with their flashy interactive star rating systems, vast message boards and reviews of everything from the nastiest fake blueberry beers to the finest ales. But sometimes a beer drinker needs something a little more...curated. More artisanal. A hoppier read. That's where Hot KnivesGreatest Sips comes in. A sweet little zine-meets handmade book perfectbound in manila file folder covers, Greatest Sips offers a series of carefully-wrought essays on 21 beers worth trying. Here's what Hot Knives' Evan George and Alex Brown have to say about one of my favorites, Pliny the Elder: "One of the few beers you can find for under $5 that fits the bill of idyllic brew, even beer-style perfection, by making a now-common hop flavor into an authentic and imitable natural art."And no, it's not available online. Remember the cool zines your friends used to put together about their favorite bands? Well this is like that, only nicer-looking and a hell of a lot more relevant. You can get it at the publisher's website, groovy Portland sustainable press Publication Studio, and probably at a few beer-centric spots around town.